Our Film Club roundtables are back with a discussion on the new horror sensation Backrooms. It tells the story of Clark, a disgruntled furniture store owner who discovers a portal into another dimension in the basement of his store. When Clark goes missing, his therapist, Mary, goes looking for him, and ventures into the liminal space we know as Backrooms.

The Backrooms phenomenon goes all the way back to 2019 starting with a post on 4Chan, where an anonymous person posted an unsettling image of an empty, seemingly ongoing office area with yellow carpet and walls. 

It created a boom in the horror subgenre called “Liminal Spaces” – places that are normally occupied by lots of people but feel uncanny and eerie when empty. In January 2022, a 14 year old named Kane Parsons started making found footage-style short films set in these liminal space. 

At 19 years old Parsons directed the feature-length version of Backrooms and has become the youngest director to open a film at number one at the North American box office. Backrooms also became the highest grossing film for A24, breaking the record in just six days.

Roundtable led by Sadona Holm.

Hosted by Ormund Alaois;

Audio production and editing by Kyle Smith.

Music by Kendrick Whiteman and Devin Shreckengost.

Listen:

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Film Club was made possible with funding from the Atwood Foundation.

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Alaska Teen Media Institute is based in Anchorage, Alaska. We would like to acknowledge the Dena’ina people, whose land we work on.